It's only $50 Billion, and besides, we'll pay for it with tax cuts!

[Crossposted from Blue Girl, Red State]

It was announced yesterday that Resident Evil™ plans next month to ask Congress for an additional $50 Billion dollars in funds to sustain the build up of American forces in the ongoing occupation of Iraq.

These funds would be in addition to the $460 Billion in the defense budget for FY 2008, and $147 Billion provided in a supplemental funding bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Preferably, this additional request would have been announced after the Petraeus-Crocker Happy Talk Express comes to deliver aWol's fat-pencil rendered report to the congwess. (There's pwogweth! It's twue!!! You can't thtop pounding thand down the wathole now, can you???)

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.

Most of the funding in the revised supplemental spending bill would go for funding the current troop-buildup strategy that has brought troop levels to 160,000. The funding for the escalation was cleverly/dishonestly left off from the 2008 budget "because they weren't sure how long it would last." The overtures that indicate additional funding will be requested indicates that the powers that be want the killing to continue apace until next spring.

Meanwhile, the Resident continued his Deny Reality 2007 Tour™ with an appearance before the American Legion in Reno, NV on Tuesday, where he gave an optimistic assessment of recent events in the war, now in its fifth year. "There are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out," he insisted. "The momentum is now on our side."

Ummm...Okay...I'm going to be 45 this Christmas. Does this mean I am finally going to get that pony?

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Cynicism About the Jordan Verdict

My cynicism is sure getting a workout lately.

Take the conviction of Lt. Colonel Steven Jordan, the highest ranking member of the armed services to stand trial for the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was not convicted of prisoner abuse, or of being a derelict officer. He was convicted of talking about what happened at the prison.

(Loose lips sink appropriations for new ships!)

And the real culprits all skate away. The Two-Star Dominatrix, MG Barbara Fast? She skates away, unencumbered by charges nor, it seems, by conscience. But some of us know the score. We know that her deputies, Military Intelligence Warrant Officers shown tuning up prisoners in the photographs right next to SSG Graner, are some of the most sadistic bastards to ever don the cloth...These criminals too, walk free.

The Army counted on the idiots of this country to buy the lie that a part-time Staff Sergeant ran the entire show. That a part-time Staff Sergeant was the ringleader of the whole sordid spectacle. They conveniently omitted from their explanation the real role of those Warrant Officers. And idiot America bought it.

Most Americans don't even know what a warrant officer actually is.

They sure as hell aren't going to explain that with a WO standing there, a SSG might as well be a PFC where accountability starts and stops. Scapegoats were sentenced to military prison, while war criminals, sadists and torturers walk free.

[H/T to Pale Rider. This post is essentially a summation of an email conversation the two of us had on this topic, with some input from my husband. Crossposted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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A Message For Congressional Democrats

A Date Certain For Ending The Iraq Debacle
By Big Tent Democrat, Talkleft, Wednesday August 29, 2007

The Bush Administration will request the Congress exercise its Spending Power and increase the funding for the Iraq Debacle:

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

. . . Most of the additional funding in a revised supplemental bill would pay for the current counteroffensive in Iraq. . . . The decision to seek about $50 billion more appears to reflect the view in the administration that the counteroffensive will last into the spring of 2008 and will not be shortened by Congress.

I believe this request provides Congress another chance to set an end date to the Iraq Debacle. The Congress must set a date certain for ending funding for Iraq Debacle operations. If they lack the political courage to say no to this funding request, the Congress must insist that this is the LAST request and that there will be no more funding for Iraq Debacle operations after a date certain. I suggest March 31, 2008. The Reid-Feingold framework:

Let me explain again - I ask for three things: First, announce NOW that the Democratic Congress will NOT fund the Iraq Debacle after a date certain. You pick the date. Whatever works politically. If October 2007 is the date Dems can agree to, then let it be then. If March 2008, then let that be the date; Second, spend the year reminding the President and the American People every day that Democrats will not fund the war past the date certain; Third, do NOT fund the Iraq Debacle PAST the date certain.

Some argue we will never have the votes for this. That McConnell will filibuster, that Bush will veto. To them I say I KNOW. But filbustering and vetoing does not fund the Iraq Debacle. Let me repeat, to end the war in Iraq, the Democratic Congress does not have to pass a single bill; they need only NOT pass bills that fund the Iraq Debacle.

But but but, defund the whole government? Defund the whole military? What if Bush does not pull out the troops? First, no, not defund the government, defund the Iraq Debacle. If the Republicans choose to shut down government in order to force the continuation of the Iraq Debacle, do not give in. Fight the political fight. We'll win. Second, defund the military? See answer to number one. Third, well, if you tell the American People what is coming for a year, and that Bush is on notice, that i t will be Bush abandoning the troops in Iraq, we can win that politcal battle too.

Understand this, if you want to end the Iraq Debacle, this is the only way until Bush is not President. If you are not for this for ending the war, tell me what you do support. I think this is the only way. And if you shy away from the only way to end the Debacle, then you really are not for ending the war are you?

[emphasis added to closing paragraph]

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Will Democrats please STFU about a “diplomacy offensive” in Iraq?

The nattering of people like Sen. Joe Biden (D-MBNA) makes it sound like the war in Iraq is solvable by other means if not winnable by military ones.

Joe: It ain’t “solvable,” either; certainly not as long as any of our troops are still there.

Besides, who are we going to “diplomacy” with? Iran will play the stall game. Syria is going to want major money (at least some degree of it, rightfully) for its Iraq refugee problem. Turkey’s going to demand we reign in the Kurdish area more than we have the ability to do with the number of troops there. The Saudis will say “yes” and still funnel money to Sunni insurgents because of Iran.

That’s our Democratic leadership: Still about two exponential factors behind the curve.

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OOIBC Renovations

Well, it's been a rather intense few days getting the new OOIBC site design to this point. The renovations are for the most part complete, though there are still a few tweaks here and there to be done.

Graphics wizards T. at Blue Girl, Red State and Joe at American Leftist are in development of a new header graphic for us. I won't give away their design philosophy and concept here but I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

Thanks to all for your patience with the rapid and perhaps unsettling changes over the past few days.

Here's a place for you to leave comments on the design, any suggestions you might have, and or functionality wish lists. Let us know what you think.

I can't promise that everything can be done, but let me know what you'd like to see and we'll do our best to make it happen.

I also want to take this opportunity to welcome our two newest members, Intrepid Liberal Journal and Gold Star Mom Speaks Out. I'm looking forward to see both of them posting here any day now.

In the meantime let's keep after the people in Washington, who seem to be having trouble "getting it", and keep beating them over the head to end the awful debacle that has been created by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and to support the troops over there by getting them home and keeping any more more of them from being injured or worse...

One of the best reasons IMO is that, as James McMurtry & The Heartless Bastards said, "We Can't Make It Here Anymore":

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Not just enlisteds leaving the Army because of Iraq

Officers from West Point are refusing to re-up after their initial term:

West Point cadets are obligated to stay in the Army for five years after graduating. In a typical year, about a quarter to a third of them decide not to sign on for another term. In 2003, when the class of 1998 faced that decision, only 18 percent quit the force: memories of 9/11 were still vivid; the war in Afghanistan seemed a success; and war in Iraq was under way. Duty called, and it seemed a good time to be an Army officer. But last year, when the 905 officers from the class of 2001 had to make their choice to stay or leave, 44 percent quit the Army. It was the service’s highest loss rate in three decades.

Col. Don Snider, a longtime professor at West Point, sees a “trust gap” between junior and senior officers. There has always been a gap, to some degree. What’s different now is that many of the juniors have more combat experience than the seniors. They have come to trust their own instincts more than they trust orders. They look at the hand they’ve been dealt by their superiors’ decisions, and they feel let down.

The gap is widening further, Snider told me, because of this war’s operating tempo, the “unrelenting pace” at which soldiers are rotated into Iraq for longer tours — and a greater number of tours — than they signed up for. Many soldiers, even those who support the war, are wearying of the endless cycle.

Meanwhile, many Army generals are bringing this on themselves by their arrogance:

Soon after (Lt. Col. Paul) Yingling’s article appeared, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, commander of the Fourth Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, reportedly called a meeting of the roughly 200 captains on his base, all of whom had served in Iraq, for the purpose of putting this brazen lieutenant colonel in his place. According to The Wall Street Journal, he told his captains that Army generals are “dedicated, selfless servants.” Yingling had no business judging generals because he has “never worn the shoes of a general.” By implication, Hammond was warning his captains that they had no business judging generals, either.

The article linked is an excellent one about an Army career development school for captains. Many of them there are ready, willing and able to challenge general officers’ perceptions and comments about Iraq. Who knows? Maybe we will see more and more material, in various forums, like the recent New York Times column from members of the 82nd Airborne.

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More from Army of Dude

This post was inspired by Blue Girl.

Alex, among the first group of soldiers in Iraq to have their tours extended three months*, is nearing the end of his duty,

Going home is a beautiful, terrifying thought to have once it gets this close to happening.

I’ll look back on the hysterical laughter during fifteen hour Baghdad clears, the terror of being pinned down by machine gun fire, the sight of a Stryker on its side and the unfolding of a body bag under the flames of a nearby school, unzipped tenderly to fit the body of Chevy as RPGs screamed overhead. Soon this place will all be in the past.

The key to it all [the surge] would be 24/7 interaction with Iraqi Army and a constant presence among the Iraqi citizens, giving them confidence in the mission of coalition forces. The building we picked used to be a whiskey distillery, and we’ve been busy putting up concrete barriers and wire around it. A house was too close to where the wall was supposed to be, so engineers blew it to smithereens and sent the family packing. The father owned the plot for forty years and comes by every so often to collect the useful bricks left scattered a hundred yards in every direction. Before he entered once, I patted his seventy year old frame down like a common criminal.

Next month we’ll be the first unit home that completed a three month extension. We were one of few to see Iraq before and after the surge. If the media got anything right, it was that the surge failed.

* One way the Pentagon increased the number of US soldiers inside Iraq during the surge was to make some soldiers stay in Iraq longer.

Sources:

Full Blog Entry on Army of Dude "I Can Taste It"

Originally posted on GDAEman Blog

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The War, the Elections and Impeachment

Two months ago I attended the national assembly of United for Peace and Justice in Chicago. Whatever it’s shortcomings (think: too white and too old), participants shared a general sense that the anti-war movement was once again on the rise, and positioned to make real advances come the fall.

Today I would argue that the anti-war movement is actually somewhat weaker than it was then. Several dedicated activists I have spoken with recently share this concern, and tend to raise problems like activist burnout, a fall calendar chock full of scattershot and all-too-disunited demonstrations, decreased media coverage of the war, the confusion sewn by the administration’s spin doctors, and lack of leadership from the Congress that was elected to end the war.

True, every point true. But the real problem, I would argue, lies elsewhere. The momentum of the anti-war movement is being slowed and distorted by the pull of powerful gravitational fields from a pair of forces that have greatly increased in strength in the last two months. These are the Democratic Party’s 2008 campaign and the grassroots movement to impeach Bush and Cheney.

In the left liberal blogosphere, these two social currents tend to be seen as opposites, pitted against one another on an empty field, and their effect on other social movements is ignored. (The flareup around the occupation of Congressman John Conyers’ office and accompanying discussion of racism is a recent exception.)

Let me lay out as clearly as I can where I stand—I am an anti-war activist first and foremost these days. In part that’s because, as an American, if I fail to do as much as I can to stop the war, I own it. In part that’s because this unjust and unjustifiable occupation is the number one issue facing the American people. (The war is the central reality of American political life and people know it: Gallup Polls says it’s been on top of their “most important problem list since March 2004”).

The great majority are well and truly sick of this war and what it’s doing to the country. They want it over with, and they want it over with yesterday. That’s not going to change. Does anyone here believe that Bush’s poll numbers have plummeted so drastically because of Valerie Plame or White House emails on Republican Party accounts?

Those Darned Democrats

Here’s how I see the dynamics. First, the Congressional majority that was elected to end the war has done a piss-poor job of it, for a variety of unattractive reasons that have been hashed over here ad nauseam. Second, the major Democratic presidential candidates are all pushing ghastly “triangulated” positions on Iraq, proposals whose implementation would extend the occupation, in modified form, for years.

Even so, some folks are inclined to think that too much else is at stake in the coming elections--the survival of Constitutional democracy and the habitability of our planet, to cite two—to allow Democratic officeholders recalcitrant about ending the war to be the targets of protest and criticism. The liberal punditocracy and many important powers in and behind the Democratic Party have taken this stand.

It is presented seductively. Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), for instance, has been running a very well-funded (thanks to the Service Employees union and others) campaign targeting Republican Congresscritters exclusively, demanding that they stand up against the war. A worthy cause, no? Why not put a hurting on the weasels?

But, as I am hardly the first to note, this is mainly a part of Campaign 2008. Those behind it don’t expect to win many Republicans to the kind of gutsy stance Walter Jones (R-NC) has taken against the war, they just want to soften them up for challenges from Democratic candidates next year. And they sure don’t expect to shake those Congressional Democrats who continue to cast votes enabling Bush and the Pentagon, because they’re not even trying to.

“Well, maybe that’s a job somebody else should do,” I hear you mutter. Correct, and that somebody else is the anti-war movement, which has been hitting elected officials from both parties hard through efforts like the Occupation Project and letter-writing, phone-calling and lobbying campaigns. But the AAEI and similar efforts tend to pull angry, activist-minded folks away from gearing up for a battle royale next month over the next $100 plus billion in appropriations Bush is demanding to pour down the rathole of the war.

(In the meantime, election-related waffling has also helped muddy the hard-won clarity of virtually all sectors of the anti-war movement that our central demand must be “End The War Now! Bring The Troops Home Now!” Suddenly we are back in 2004-5, having to explain and debunk nonsense about “phased withdrawal” and “timelines and benchmarks” and “residual forces,” and “Iraqi political realignment” all over again.)

Well, Why Not Impeachment?

Okay, having pissed off many honest progressive Democratic Party stalwarts, let me see what I can do with the Impeachment activists. Their position is in one sense a mirror image of the election-centered forces. They too are desperate about the grievous harm that Bush and his co-conspirators are doing—to Iraq, the environment, democracy and civil liberties, etc. So intense are their concerns that they feel that waiting 17 months is courting disaster. And, after watching this Congress, many understandably suspect that even a substantial Democratic win might not do much to reverse the damage.

Friends have told me repeatedly in recent months, “We will never get this war ended until we’ve impeached Bush and Cheney.” What this amounts to is saying that the anti-war movement must refocus on the struggle to impeach.

I would argue that this is wrong. Unlike many who have challenged the impeachment enthusiasts, I don’t argue, “It’s not practical.” That argument is predicated on things staying just as they are. Suppose Bush orders an attack on Iran, to global condemnation and deep, visible resistance in the High Command. Suppose a scandal more readily comprehensible than the US Attorney firings erupts. Suppose a major stock market crash gets the Katrina treatment from administration incompetents. Suppose Bush moves toward postponing the elections. Might not impeachment become the order of the day in a real hurry (even if some Democratic strategists would still rather keep it off the table to improve the odds for a November blowout)?

Folks who have been pushing impeachment for years, like After Downing Street, have performed an invaluable service by raising the issue and building extensive popular sentiment for it at the grassroots level, and have done so with a tiny fraction of the resources going into various Democratic campaigns. They have created networks, conditions and consciousness that may yet bear fruit in impeachment and conviction.

But the pull on the anti-war movement to make “Impeachment Now” its central demand has, again, an unfortunate and distorting effect on the movement’s momentum. Folks who have been driving forces in building opposition to the war have set it to the side for the sake of this cause, or tried to shift the focus of organizations and coalitions they are in.

To be sure, many of the best organized and most effective anti-war forces have impeachment as part of their program, like United For Peace & Justice and Veterans For Peace, so I may seem to be splitting hairs here, but I think not.

Tackling the “Order of Magnitude Gap"

My point is a simple one, but one that bears repeating. It is Iraq that’s the main issue among the people of this country. Ending the war should be the main focus for progressives and activists. The way to do that is to face up to the “order of magnitude gap" we face: 60% of the people may want the war over, but perhaps 6% has ever done anything about it—worn a button, signed a petition, stood in a vigil, called a Senator’s office, voted in a referendum, anything. We aren’t going to get the whole 60%, but reaching solidly into the two digit range will make a huge difference.

That calls for concentrating on outreach, for organizing at a very local level, and for keeping the threshold of entry low so people who are against the war don’t sense barriers when we encourage them to act against the war. This is the idea behind, for instance, the Iraq Moratorium, scheduled to kick off September 21.

If the big issue is the war, that means keeping the demand to end it front and center in our agenda. The main strategic target of the movement is the Bush/Cheney gang who started the war and are glad to continue it indefinitely. But if other folks insist on gluing themselves to the target, and this includes elected Democrats, that’s no reason for us to hold our fire. And our tactics must be flexible, including ones that isolate and put maximum pressure on any Democrats who don’t dare to stand against the war when crucial votes come before Congress.

The efforts of the anti-war movement may lead to impeachment. Or they may not. They may well lead to a Democratic blowout in 2008. Or they may not.

But they will lead to a more rapid end to a criminal war which continues to be a catastrophe of almost unimaginable magnitude for the people of Iraq and has done incalculable and permanent damage to our own country.

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Your Pentagon Iraq War Room PR $$ at work

Those Sunni insurgents we’ve been giving a shitload of arms to be nice to us and shoot the guys we call Al Qaeda in Iraq? They’ve been rebranded as “concerned local nationals.”

“These are patriots who have come forward and have joined the security process. They are working with my soldiers and they are working with the Iraqi security forces,” Col. David Sutherland said.

Hell, why don’t we just call them the Sunni Department of the Iraqi national police force while we’re at it?

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It’s All Good

“Sarah, if the people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched.” - Bush 41 to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992

Hannah Arendt would’ve described this administration’s increasingly Byzantine dealings as “the inanity of evil.” There’s really no other phrase to describe it.

In describing the nondescript, guilt-free testimony of Adolph Eichmann to an Israeli court as “the banality of evil”, Arendt gave future generations a cautionary tale in miniature as to how easily we can coexist with evil even when it rears its innocuous-looking, balding head. However, she unintentionally left us unprepared for another kind of evil that’s comfortably nestled like a camouflaged snake in what passes for American culture: The inanity of evil.



By this, one can infer that the current administration runs like a crippled Ratso Rizzo in a universally-inhabited dream world of shifting sand, where traction, grace or a step is never lost and bad never happens or, at worst, is casually acknowledged and pre-emptively written off. Indeed, George W. Bush has become quite adept at neutralizing current and future criticism of the war in Iraq by coldly predicting that US casualties will be heavy in the month of August and that’s merely the cost of doing war.

But that’s but one of the many Protean rationales and objectives that one could not have predicted from an administration and army of flacks and drumbeaters who’d assured us in 2003 that US troop casualties would be kept to a bare minimum, that Iraqi civilians would be spared from senseless destruction ("the sheer humanity" gushed Rumsfeld) due to the quasi-divine level of technology of our laser-guided missiles and smart bombs.

Then, after being told to be patient while we await the good news from Gen. Petraeus this September, we were then told not to raise our expectations or expect too much from the man who'd said from the outset that the surge "had a one in four chance of suceeding." The turnaround time from lofty promises to lowered expectations is getting alarmingly more brief.

The most disturbing aspect of this war is not merely the constantly metamorphosing impetuses for invading and occupying Iraq but that the administration never makes it a point to remind us that these expectations have been lowered, that they’d once made pie-in-the-sky promises that Iraq’s war would cost one billion dollars and would be paid for by their own oil revenue, that we could mop up the place with 135,000 troops and be back home by the 4th of July 2003, that we’d be greeted as liberators, that democracy would take root and become the political gold standard for the Middle East.

This constant revisionist mindset, accompanied by the paternal invocation of, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing” fits like a velvet glove over an iron fist with a criminally deferential press and an American “culture”, for want of a better word, that embraces the catchphrase of, “It’s all good.”

But “it’s all good” is in itself a complacent Republican sentiment that was expressed nearly 300 years ago when Alexander Pope wrote in the “Essay on Man, Epistle I,”

All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

And to bring that point home, the Bush administration and Fox News seem to be inappropriately humping that other delightful Pope axiom of a little learning being a dangerous thing.

The press gets that when they nervously gulp and ask Bush or any senior administration official in a quavering voice questions such as, “If major combat operations were over by May 2003, then why do we need a surge?” Or, “How can the American people continue to believe that you’re aware of what’s going on and aren’t living in a constant state of denial?” Such impertinent questions are almost invariably responded to as an impatient father would after having his values questioned by his increasingly self-aware 12 year-old.

And an administration that depends entirely on Orwellian revisionism, aided greatly by a White House press pool full of Winston Smiths all too eager to forget the failed objectives, discredited rationales and once-lofty expectations doesn’t like an electorate that can think for itself and has lengthening memories. It’s notable that the people who are most conspicuously the targets of partisan backlash are the ones who are finally getting organized and have the power to mobilize like-minded people: Liberal, progressive bloggers.

It is impossible to imagine a political landscape without political bloggers, upon whom an increasingly large percentage of online news consumers are depending for an explicated, factual version of current events, as well as upon Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It’s more than a sad and even alarming state of affairs for democracy when we have to depend upon part-time political pundits who, at most, daily attract 1-2% of the national population and comedians on the Comedy Channel for their news.

Yet it’s equally difficult for many distracted Americans to remember a day when we were told again and again that we were neutralizing a mushroom-clouded terrorist threat west of Iran and replacing it with milk and honey. And this is why the netroots is more relevant and necessary than ever.

Because not enough of the electorate has come to grips with the fact that we have failed in every one of our stated objectives (and even the ancillary ones, such as bringing democracy to Iraq, a nation deeply divided among three warring factions, not the most auspicious seedbed for Jeffersonian democracy) except in one notable instance:

Enriching the corporate sector, something forcefully promised by Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon briefing room on September 10th, 2001. It’s easy to view Iraq as a screaming success if you’re Eric Prince in the Great Dismal Swamp or the man who’s increasingly recognized by our Rip Van Winkle electorate as the sinister Phantom of Halliburton’s boardroom, Dick Cheney.

The same thing could be said of post-Katrina New Orleans. Blackwater USA wound up making a tidy $73,000,000 for their “work” in New Orleans while their mercenaries ambled around the French Quarter complaining to the press about making “only” $350 a day, a little over half what they made in Iraq, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. And New Orleans’ reconstruction has been bogged down in red tape at the municipal, state and especially the federal level, yet Halliburton still rakes in billions from the glacial cleanup and gets tax breaks from the SBA for qualifying as a small business (because Halliburton doesn’t ordinarily take on contracts such as post-disaster cleanup, which only beggars the question, “Why give it to them, in the first place?”).

If Hannah Arendt were alive today, she would surely characterize this cast of criminals who would call the sky green if Keith Olbermann or Michael Moore said it was blue, as the inanity of evil.

And we cannot say that we weren’t warned years ago when Karl Rove told Ron Suskind (and it would’ve surely been Bush’s Brain, since this quote is pure Rove),

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

The sad part is, when the observant among us see how more or less successful is the new smear campaign against Iran, it's becoming increasingly obvious that we’re not even studying.

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